Our world is awash in words. I bale my inbox like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, frantic not to drown. More than a few friends have turned jimmied hydrants, including yours truly. Between authors I revere and friends I love, it’s impossible to keep up – who has time to read a book? I doubt people talk more than before, but we publish more, and electronics preserve our utterances. Digitized words never die, they mass into mountains, which search engines can sort through and AI summarize with dizzying alacrity. It’s nice that so many have their say, but with so many saying, fewer get heard by more than their intimates. That I contribute to this problem makes it no less a problem. At my testudinal reading rate, it would take me the better part of a year to read all I’ve published during that period – and I’m just one! What a mercy to zip my trap! Only I can’t. I have too much to say in too little time, I can no more arrest these secretions than the other sorts. To expect anyone to read all I send is cruel and greedy – even Jane sometimes has trouble keeping up.
How to cope with this predicament, which will only worsen, as social media mavens turn non-stop glossolalics? I blush to dispatch these paragraphs – but the inquiry’s interesting, no?
Absence of a shared text corrodes communication instead of encouraging it. Having one holy book or common literary canon puts a people – literally – on the same page. Sharing stories facilitates conversation and binds us closer. We like those who are like us.
These days, everybody’s reading something different. Jane and I read the same news – alas! – but seldom the same literature. We’d have more to talk about if we did. Critiques of books one will never read are unlikely to entice.
Substack, the ingenious publishing platform which disperses these words (and those of seventeen thousand other spouters), is organized around the principle of authors embracing and promoting other authors’ work. I’m all for it, I “like” a lot. But the more I like and am liked, the more pressure I feel to reciprocate the kindness, leaving me less time to conceive and compose. My fidgety attention is shattered by chatter. While I feel guilty if I don’t reply thoughtfully to a thoughtful response, too much chatter transforms me into a chatterbox, not worth reading.
Thoreau, as you may recall, is my main man. Since college my psyche has followed his lead. But Thoreau was a misanthrope, who slammed his door on the world, to discover from the silence what he thought. That’s not me! My nature is affectionate, convivial, gregarious – that’s my idea anyway. I’d perish without playfellows. Only my form of play – writing – is solitudinous. I write to be with people I can’t be with if I’m to write. A conundrum.
I’ve no idea how to address this verbiage crisis. I flail furiously to stay afloat, then, like an exhausted swimmer, quit trying, and let myself sink. Longing to be a part, I must live apart. How can I invite you to read me while I refuse to read you because I haven’t time? The nerve!
One happy effect of too many words is to vanquish pride: how can one molecule be vain amidst so many? A second is to persuade us to write for the right reason – because we want to, not because the world insists. A third is to goad me to write with all my might – to the edge of page: the competition for your attention is too stiff!